This I Believe

“Whaddaya know for sure?” My dad at his most jovial would greet almost anyone with this, including me. It was embarrassing. I never answered him and I never asked him back. I thought it was the dumbest thing, so corny and clichéd. Today, 30 years after his death, I find it profound. What could be more important, with the world apparently dissolving into chaos, than answering that question?

Over the years I’ve lived and taught in six countries. I understand that most knowing is a perspective. That whatever I perceive is just one small facet on the jewel of the universe. From observation alone I can’t know anything for sure, since how I look determines what I see. All I truly know comes from my personal interaction with the world. I have to feel my way into it, especially when it doesn’t seem to be what everybody else knows. I feel for the truth of what I know by trying to live it. That’s the test. If I can live it, and it works, then I know by the world’s response. We’re in dialogue, dancing, and when we finally synchronize there’s a thrill of confirmation, a shiver of knowing, a deepening trust in life itself. Being kind, acting with conscious intention, taking just enough, giving what you can, being grateful, paying attention, forgiving – these work in the world, sustaining the dance and confirming the trust.

Trusting my own experience can be lonely. But slowly comes a confirmation and joyful gratitude that more than compensates. From long experience fumbling the dialogue, stumbling through the dance, feeling for the truth, I now know this much: I am an essential participant in one huge beautiful living system of systems – from atoms to oceans, from microbes to mankind – in which every single living thing depends absolutely on every other living thing for every second of its existence. I know, like it or not, that I am my brother’s keeper. I know that love is acting consciously from this knowing, and that I have to accept this and all the responsibility that goes with it for the whole thing to continue. I know that the Earth – the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos – is alive, a conscious, throbbing, breathing, evolving creative intelligence, and that I play a continuous role in its birth, its life, and its collapse back into chaos. And through my consciousness, my intention, and my action I help determine the circumstances of that cycle in time and space. I know that this is a crucial time when I have to be fully conscious, pay close attention, and trust in the outcome. And, finally, I know that I am part of you, and you of me, and we are all in this together. That’s what I know, for sure!

I miss my dad. We were never close, we disagreed on almost everything, and he died before we could talk it all out. But I loved him dearly and I still do. If I could talk to my dad again, I know what I’d ask him. “Hey Dad, “Whaddaya know for sure?” And then we’d dance.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.